Words in the Trees
by Vega62a
Summary: Chie sees everything that happens, so long as it doesn't happen to her. A story in three parts, centering around Chie Harada and Aoi Senou. Rated T for language. Chapter 3 now up!
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Mai-HiME. I also don't own this clever disclaimer. Your face does.

Author's notes: This first chapter is really nothing but an introduction, so I doubt it will do much of anything for most of you. Just be sure you come back and read the other two chapters. I think you'll enjoy them.

* * *

Words in the trees

A short story in three parts.

* * *

I see everything at this school. Usually, I know when somebody is going to confess practically before they do. I am the Queen of Gossip, and I enjoy myself thoroughly. 

It's nothing but a hobby, though. I don't let it distract me from my real life. I have a real life, you know. I'm not just a Reliable Source. I have friends, decent grades, and I let my eye wander around sometimes. On rare, rare occasion I even get asked out to dinner. I usually accept, have a great time, and then stop talking to them after a few months. It's nothing personal. My eye just has a habit of sliding away from somebody almost as fast as it slides onto them. I'm sure I've been called an Ice Queen in low tones, behind my back. I'm okay with that: I know who said it anyway.

I guess the question I always ask myself now is why, if it's only a hobby, I let it distract me so utterly from what was right next to me? I guess there's no excuse for me missing it. If it was because my "hobby" was truly an obsession, then I obviously wasn't very good at it. Otherwise…

There's no excuse, but I think that's okay. I was never asked for one.

And really, I guess, it didn't take me too far off-guard when it happened.

Even though we were so close, so comfortable together, I was still just _teacher _to her in my mind. You invite especially close teachers to your house for dinner sometimes. You call them just to talk. That was just how we were. Close friends, but, in my mind, separated from some invisible barrier that I always just assumed was the same barrier that kept teachers from mounting students in the water closet when nobody else was around. I guess I kind of felt that with everybody. There was a wall between me and everybody else; it was the wall that strangers feel between each other. It was a mythological wall, that wall of "ice" that refused to budge, no matter how hard you pushed, but that slid aside if you opted merely to walk through, your eyes wide open.

And even though we were so close, so very comfortable together, she still felt it necessary to do it the old-fashioned way when she finally did it. She could have just come right out and asked, in the middle of school. I would have said the same thing. In spite of what I perceived to be an impregnable wall, there was still only one real answer.

But still, she did it the old-fashioned way.

* * *

"Chie," Aoi said, her face red and her eyes wide. "Please…just do it. This is torture." Her breathing was heavy, and she was coated with a thin layer of sweat. Her hands were warm on my shoulders. It was pretty obvious to me that she was desperate. 

But she was also in a little physical pain. Watching her sweat was fun, but I _did _like her, so I didn't really want her to die. I drank another mouthful of water from the fountain, savoring the cool wetness on my lips, and then moved aside to let Aoi, who had taken the mile far too quickly for her untrained body (not that I was one to criticize), in beside me.

Her slurping was fairly well unladylike, if I do say so myself, but I also felt a twinge of regret as I watched her gulp the water down. She looked pretty pained, to be honest. I wondered if maybe I had taken it too far for just a moment—a rare instant of doubt—until she came up and grinned at me.

"You're an evil woman," she said to me. "You know that? If Sister Yukariko saw you right now, why, I wouldn't be shocked to hear her damn you to hell on the spot!"

"She's too busy working out a way to get Sister Nao sent down there under the radar," I smirked back. She stepped out of the way and some other poor, sweating bastard gratefully lurched forward, propelling herself face-first into the cool spray. We started walking towards the locker banks, Aoi's face shining a little strangely. Something odd popped into my head.

"You know, you could have taken a drink before I finished," I said. "Do you just enjoy being tormented brutally?"

She shrugged nonchalantly. "Mai was waving for me from the locker banks. I had to go talk to her."

"Is that why you freaking raced around the track like that?" I prodded. "You felt that soon, your true love would beckon to you from a steel forest of sweaty women and stinky shoes, and you knew that being early would get you a little more play?"

Aoi went red (redder), and I frowned. It wasn't like her to respond QUITE so strongly to my teasing; but a moment later, she said, "I wanted to see how fast I could do it."

_That _was more circa Aoi Senou; it felt genuine to me, and my brow unknitted itself. In my experience, if something is wrong, it doesn't stop being wrong, genuinely, for even a second.

So I let it go.

"So what did Mai want?"

"Advice. She told me, and I quote, 'I'm sorry to trouble you with something like this; normally I'd ask Chie, but I'd rather not have my troubles posted on the blackboards tomorrow.'"

I rolled my eyes. "Is she _still _mad about that?"

"A little," Aoi said as we entered the locker banks. As soon as we entered, a sharply stale aroma filled my nostrils, and I coughed slightly. "Extra-ripe today," I said.

"Yeah," she shrugged. "Mile-run days are always like that." She said it distantly with an air of routine, like a woman in a windowless nuthouse might say, _Nice weather today. _

"And just to set the record straight," I continued, "_I _did not write that Yuuichi hadn't been staring at Mai's tits as intently as he usually did on the blackboard. _That _was Mikoto."

"Who you told."

_Are you mad at me?_

"Who I told. But it was still not me."

"Fair point," she said, her voice a little quieter. She looked away, and I frowned. As soon as we got to our lockers, I put my hand on her shoulder, still damp.

"Are you pissed at me too?" I asked, a little knot in my stomach. "I apologized to her, but if it…"

"No," Aoi shrugged with her other shoulder, so that my hand stayed in place. "It's nothing like that."

"Are you feeling alright?" I swear, my eyebrows were going to have a crease between them before I hit twenty.

"I'm fine." She looked up and smiled at me as we sat down on the benches. "Just…thinking."

"About what?"

"Nothing important. Don't worry about it."

I sighed. Had some boy shot her down? She had said a few days ago that she was thinking about confessing to somebody—she wouldn't tell me who; so close to the act, this was probably wise because, like it or not, I do run my mouth sometimes when I don't intend to—that I knew. Had he shot her down? If he had, so help me god, he would fucking _burn _in this school.

"Really," her smile was a little bigger this time, and in spite of myself, I smiled back at her. "I'm _fine._"

I let my breath out, a little relieved, and opened my locker.

* * *

I guess, looking back on it, I always had a little crush on Aoi, I just never knew what to do about it. I grew up in a pretty old-fashioned house. Being a lesbian wasn't really forbidden to me; it was just never presented as a viable option for one of the ways I would turn out. 

In fairness, I'm bisexual, not a lesbian. I still look at boys. In my mother's eyes, this was probably worse. At least as a lesbian I was a sinner. Bisexual, I was "looking at the true path and taking a shit on it." She said this the day that I moved out to be a reporter and live somewhere where she wasn't; I had told her I was bisexual two years before that.

The way I crushed on Aoi wasn't particularly novel in Japan: Instead of acting on it, or at least thinking about it (I never really knew it was there until…until I eventually needed it), I ignored it and decided to protect the living shit out of Aoi. I loved her, and pretended that I loved her like a sister. That way, it wasn't really a lie, so it didn't trigger that little bullshit-detector I had lurking in me, somewhere between my stomach and the base of my spine.

It wasn't usually my bullshit detector that was off. Most of the time, it was my head, glossing over the obvious that would lie in the details, hidden safely away from me. A glance; a single word; any of these things I might gloss over by mistake, and then a nice fat pile of horse crap might go undetected forever.

Or maybe not.

* * *

In spite of how nonchalant I wanted to be about the whole thing, I couldn't stop my breath from catching in my throat a little when I saw the little frilly-pink letter sitting in my locker on top of my shoes. Yes, boys took me out, and I even got occasional love-letters stuffed in my locker, but …something about it…the timing…my eyes widened in almost as much horror as shock, and it was pretty obvious on my face for half a second. 

I chanced a glance at Aoi, and saw that she looked just as surprised as I did. She was in the middle of turning from looking at me to looking at the letter that I extracted from my locker, and after she got a good look, she glanced back at me, and something about her told me she was almost…hurt. I didn't even stop to think about why; at the moment, it didn't matter to me.

_I'm sorry, _I wanted to say, _this isn't my fault._

Instead, I opened it. It was written in a boy's messy characters.

_Meet me by the fountain after school, _it said. _Please do not be late, for the sake of my heart. _

I wanted to roll my eyes and gag. I also wanted to tear the boy's throat out, whoever it was. That one flash of _hurt _in Aoi's eyes had latched onto my heart somewhere, dragging it down into my thigh.

I wouldn't do either. But I was certainly not going to accept his feelings right now. It seemed a little bit unfair somewhere in the back of my head, but the back of my head was going to have to stuff it.

Anger wasn't my style, though. I didn't really like confrontation, for all my tough thoughts. So rather than professing, loudly, my undying hatred for the author of this card, I read it aloud to Aoi with a huge grin on my face, and we both laughed at the last part—it was positively _atrocious. _The hurt was gone from her eyes, and I smiled, laid my hand on her shoulder, about to suggest that we both go get lunch and forget about the whole thing.

"Let's go together, okay?"

I blinked. "You…what?"

"Let's go together. You're planning on turning him down, are you?"

"Unless it's a supermodel or Shibutani Subaru, yes, you bet I am."

"Then let's go together."

I frowned. "Why?"

"He can think we're together or something. I don't know. It'll let him down easier."

_Aoi, you stupid bastard, _I thought without knowing why. _Stop being so nice to people. _

_Stop being so unfailingly…kind._

I agreed anyway, and, it being the last class of the day as it was, we set out for the fountain, still in our sweaty, gritty clothes. For effect and all. Everybody knew lesbians were the only females that sweated or held hands for more than a few seconds at a time, so we held hands the entire way there.

* * *

A/N: Watch for part two sometime in the next couple days! 


	2. Chapter 2

Author's notes:

Finally, chapter two is here! Life ate my life recently, and I'm still recovering from that. I'm back at uni now, and I finished this not long ago.

Don't forget to check out Resolution chapter 16!

Thanks to all those who reviewed! And thanks to my awesome editor, Sumi, for fixing my English so it doesn't suck quite so hard, and for fixing Mai so she remained Mai. All mistakes are mine and mine alone.

Disclaimer: I own your soul, which I got from the devil for mowing his lawn three times a week, but somehow I missed out on owning Mai-HiME when I was bartering with him.

* * *

_Speak the truth or make your peace on my way / I never knew / but I believe that your trust in me will speak to me_

* * *

Words in the Trees, part two

Speak

Like I said before, my mind tends to gloss over little details that should be very important to me: The smell of fish cooking to inform me that I'm about to be treated to a meal; the chill in an autumn wind telling me that winter is coming; the side of a tree that moss grows on, pointing me to where I should be going.

Sometimes my mind makes unforgivable mistakes, too. Things that I can never excuse it for.

My mind made one of those mistakes that day.

As well as I knew it at a level below my own, as often as I'd had a chance to experience this particular sensation, my mind, as it always did, failed to inform me how good Aoi's hand really felt in my own.

* * *

There was nobody waiting for us at the fountain when we got there. It was, in fact, completely deserted except for Mai, who was simply passing behind it. It was on the way to her dorm, after all.

"Oi!" I called, waving at her. "Mai!"

She stopped, blinked, recognized me, scampered towards us. I say "scampered" because it's really the only way to describe Mai when she's utterly at peace, content with herself and the world; she's really as much of a cat as that girl of hers Mikoto is; she just hides it better.

"How're you doing?" Mai said, flashing that man-killing smile of hers at us. The worst of it is that she's got no real clue the kind of affect her smile has on other people, namely on other men. And me, as we've established already by the fact that I was, indeed, sweating and holding hands with Aoi.

I opened my mouth to say something, but Aoi cut me off. "We're quite well," she said with a big grin—her smile was easily as deadly as Mai's, but only when it was more than a humored grin, which it most definitely was at this moment—"but listen, we've got kind of a problem. Have you seen anybody around here in the past five minutes or so?"

_Has she been waiting around here for five minutes? _I wondered briefly. A few seconds later, I decided that she had probably been within view of the fountain for five minutes, and a second after that, my bullshit detector started blaring at me.

Maybe I was just overthinking it.

"I haven't seen anybody," Mai said with a frown. "But I _did _see something stuck to the other side of the fountain."

I frowned and said, "What kind of thing?"

"No idea," Mai shrugged. "It looked like a piece of paper. Here, one second, I'll go and get it."

I started to protest, but before I could, she had gone to retrieve whatever it was, and I felt a little bit of dread creep in amidst my annoyance. Not only had the bastard made Aoi

_look at me like that_

sad, but he had either stood us up, or…

Or what I was dreading would come true, and this was going to turn into some goddamn pseudo-romantic wild duck hunt. I say "hunt" because I was going to shoot him as soon as I had a clear shot.

Mai came back holding something with pink frills and a crease roughly down the center, and I began to wish that I'd asked my mother for a shotgun for my birthday instead of a new camera. Mai started to open it, and my eyes bugged out. The next second, moving with a speed I never knew I possessed and a dexterity I certainly didn't, I knocked it out of her hands; I had intended to snatch it from her grasp, but my fingers weren't that nimble.

Glancing back at Aoi, I saw a flash of that look on her face again, and it only imbued my resolve; I considered different ways to use my limited abilities in the fields of math, science, and a little thing called "aim" to construct and employ a crude bow-and-arrow.

Instead, I picked the card up and read it, first to myself to make sure it wasn't horrifically embarrassing, and then aloud. Once again, the card was a little corny.

"Please," I said quietly, not wanting to broadcast somebody's message of undying love (though certainly not mine) to everybody else, mostly for their sake, "forgive this misdirection of the flesh. I swear to you I have not deceived your heart, and I will show you if you will meet me in the forest at the base of the mountain trail."

When I looked up, Mai was smirking at me, and Aoi was cleverly studying the cement under her feet. Put two and two together, and you got me ripping the cement out from under Aoi so she'd stop staring at it so intently, and using it to pound the smart-ass out of Mai.

I'd never do that, of course. I'm a devoted pacifist, honest.

"I guess you'd better head out then, shouldn't you?" Mai said, her smartassed grin still begging for contact with pavement. "You wouldn't want him to think that you thought your heart had been misdirected too, would you?"

"Fuck you," I muttered, crumpling the paper up and throwing it in the fountain. "I'm going to do something to his heart, but it's not going to have anything to do with misdirection."

I swear I'm not usually this violent. At the time, I had no idea what was eating at me so hard.

It had something to do, I think, with the way Aoi said, her voice a little weak, as though she was struggling to say what she wanted to say, "can I still come with you?"

As though she thought that maybe I would say no.

Instead, I grabbed her hand and smiled at her, forcing her to look up at me, to meet my gaze, which I hoped was reassuring and fierce all at once. "Of course you can," I said. "How can I be lesbian _flambé _all by myself? We're going to get this guy, Aoi. Promise."

Mai said from behind me, cleverly out of my peripheral vision so I couldn't bean her with something, "Chie is scary when people ask her out without her permission."

Also from behind me, somebody else said, "Mai, what's 'lesbian'? Is it a kind of food?"

Mai snorted, and I realized that 'somebody else' was Mikoto, the only person who could possibly say something so true while remaining so unbearably innocent. She had probably come up behind Mai when I was in the middle of premeditating murder.

I turned around to find, as expected, a curious-faced Mikoto, hanging off of Mai's arm. Mai looked at her with the same resigned look of affection that I had always seen in Aoi's mildly conservative, yet ultimately accepting parents. I had never really known what it meant; she had never been the clingy type around them, and the few times I had had dinner at her house, I had always sensed a dull tension between them: Not the kind of tension you get when you're about to explode, but the kind of tension you might get with your lover a day after a fight. I guess it was something nearer to an excess of delicacy.

I wondered briefly why there was an excess of delicacy between Mikoto and Mai, and then dismissed it. She'd tell me eventually if she was going to tell me. I hoped that she was going to tell me. In hindsight, I knew exactly why it was, and really, it only took me a few moments to catch on.

I wanted to make sure she did tell me, though, and for the first time in a long time I felt a pang of guilt at something I'd done. To Mai, no less; not my closest friend, but far from my most distant; I trusted her, and she trusted me, and the thought that I'd lose her trust was suddenly eating at me a lot more than it probably should have been considering I hadn't done anything horrible to her.

Or maybe I had. She was a shy girl. She didn't like those things getting spread all over the school.

Maybe Aoi saw it in my face like a psychic, or maybe she was just more cunning than I gave her credit for, because a second later, she said, "I'm just going to go wait ahead for you, okay? I'll wait by the edge of the forest."

I nodded to her, and a moment later, she left, ushering Mikoto off with her, losing all pretense at that point. Now it was just me and Mai, facing each other

_excess of delicacy_

not entirely comfortably. The moment of silence that followed threatened to open its yaw and stretch itself into infinity; she just looked at me, her gaze not entirely happy, and I found myself looking away, unable to speak for that moment.

_excess_

Fuck that.

"Mai," I said, my tone louder than that of the average apology, "I'm really sorry about telling Mikoto about your thing with Tate. I…" _didn't know she was going to write it on about fifteen different blackboards around the school for fun. She's not usually like that; it's almost like she was _trying _to fuck with your mind but I didn't want that honestly I didn't I hated that look on your face when you walked in and saw it and saw her and people were laughing and Mikoto didn't look confused like she usually does she looked like she _"wasn't thinking. I honestly don't know what I was thinking, but—"

Mai rarely cuts people off mid-sentence, even if she wants to scream at them, so when she does, you shut up and pay attention. "Why would you tell that to_ anybody, _much less Mikoto, Chie?" I shut up and paid attention, because even if her tone was quiet, her voice was hard. "Even before this, she'd been clinging onto me literally _all the time._" She looked like she kind of wanted to stop, but wanted more to continue, and I didn't stop her; the fact that I hadn't heard Mai complain about _anything _more than about three times in my life held me in rapt attention, and it certainly didn't hurt that healthy guilt complex that my subconscious was busily constructing. "And…and she actually _pouts _when I go to spend time with Yuuichi. I've never seen her act like this before, and…" "She's acting like…like Yuuichi did. Before."

I knew what she meant. She was acting like Yuuichi had when he had thought Mai had agreed to cheer that clingy little kid Shiho on. Hurt, betrayed, and as immature as he could manage. It sounded to me like Mikoto was just acting like a jealous ex-girlfriend, and, unfortunately, this didn't surprise me. In reality, I had expected this for a long time; Mikoto had been musing forever about how Mai was hers and how Yuuichi and Reito should give up on her, and it was only a matter of time before she started becoming bitter at the prospect of these musings never turning into something more. I honestly think she was in love with Mai, but she probably had absolutely no idea what to do with that love. Mikoto was immature, at best, though not generally childish, and after a while, all first loves turn into bitterness.

And then they're over with, and it's like it never happened. But what do you do when you live with your first love? Does it just vanish like that?

Fucked if I know. My first love was my second grade teacher; he was really creepy, in retrospect, but he treated me well, and paid attention to me, told me I was a good kid. That only made it creepier, but at the time, I was convinced I would be married to him as soon as I came of age and graduated from second grade.

I sighed. "I'm sorry, Mai. Really, I am; what's going on is probably going to be hard on both you_ and _Mikoto."

"I know that," Mai said quietly, her voice more bitter than I was used to from her. "I already know all of that, but even so," she shook her head, "I wish there was something I could do about it."

She understood too. Mai was sharp; there wasn't a soul on earth that could deny that. I went to her then, and put my arms around her, squeezing as tight as I could, whispering to her that I was sorry.

After a few seconds, she returned my hug, buried her head in my neck; a moment later, I felt something hot and moist drip down my shirt; her tears mingled with the sweat on my breasts, and while I'm sure somebody would have found it attractive, there was simply no way to make it anything but sorrowful at that moment.

Maybe a minute later, she broke the hug, looked me in the eye. "You're lucky," she said. "Your other best friend isn't a kid."

I laughed at this. I laughed because I didn't want to admit that what Mai said was practically news to me; I still saw Aoi as a sort of student at that point. Even teachers barely older than those they teach see all students as children. I laughed because she was right. "Forgive me?" She nodded, and I grinned at her and said, my tone lighter, "Good. Then I'm allowed to tell you not to think of Mikoto as a kid for too much longer. She's not; she's just had no role model to base romance in her life on."

"And what about Aoi?" Mai asked. This confused me and hit me in the stomach pretty hard, all at once, and I had no idea why.

"What about her?" I answered, lacking anything wittier to say.

She chuckled and shook her head. "Nothing. You should probably catch up to her."

I stared at her for a minute, trying to decide what she meant by that. Maybe she didn't mean anything. Maybe I was just turning paranoid. This letter thing had put me pretty on-edge pretty quick; I wasn't normally this high-strung. Was something happening to me?

I put it out of my head. I was probably just pissed because of how Aoi had looked

_eyes downcast fingers wringing together _

hurt. I was very protective of her.

"Alright," I said without thinking about it, in lieu of a better excuse to leave. "I'll do that."

Mai had this funny look on her face when I left. I didn't understand it for a long time; at that moment I gave it barely a pause to consider as I took off for the edge of the forest, at the base of a little path that, if followed long enough, led to the top of the mountain that bathed our school in shadow every sunset.

It wasn't a long jog; five minutes, tops, and it didn't particularly affect me. Maybe that was from the mile run; my blood was already moving, and my adrenaline was really just lying under the grass, waiting to pounce. When I got there, however, Aoi was panting; like though she was being exhausted for me. _Oh, don't you worry about that exhaustion, ma'am; I'll just take that for you. _

I frowned at her, and she looked at me with as much of a grin as she could muster through her sheen of hot lesbian sweat. Sorry, _our _sheen of hot lesbian sweat. I grabbed her hand, curious about why she looked so breathless, and wanting desperately to ask, but more concerned about what I saw in her eyes: Anxiety. She was nervous about something, as, I realized, she had been all night. I wondered what it was, but for the first time in as long as I could remember, I cared more about making it go away than about finding out what was up; I was a knowledge hog, but I was also Aoi's friend.

So I grabbed her hand and pulled her along as I took off into a jog up the small incline. "Come on," I said. "We're going hunting; no time to be exhausted now, sweetheart."

She looked fairly startled by my sudden burst of energy. I guess I was too.

But we went together anyway. It felt good.

* * *

That forest remains one of my favorite places on this earth, even now, many years after this happened. Not simply for the memories I have of it, but for the way it looked. The way it smelled. The earth here alternated between brown and green, between soft and crunchy; the browns were soft, light browns that reminded you less of dirt clods and more of a fragrant garden; the greens were dark and full, natural. There was no order to the whole thing, and yet, I felt that this was because the forest was order unto itself. Poetic, right? I prefer to think anybody with any sort of oratory skills would say the same thing.

The trees, though. It was the trees that really got to me; the older trees were huge and overpowering; in their shadow, the growing, thinner trees, sheltered from the wind and the storms by what I could only call their parents. Their bark was just a shade lighter than the brown of the earth; their leaves a shade darker than the green of the grass. They surrounded you, protecting both you and themselves. That's really the best way I can describe it.

Aoi and I didn't say anything while we walked up the forest path, which led to a mountain trail after about a ten minute walk. We didn't need to. Her hand was warm, soft, and a little moist in mine, and it felt damned good. Even if we were only lesbians for a day, it really did feel good.

It almost didn't surprise me when, at the base of the mountain trail, another note was tacked to the same tree that served as a sign for students that the trail was about to turn steep. The tree itself was really two trees that had grown out of the same trunk, branching opposite each other, forming a crude _V. _

The note read, _Please, meet me at the peak of this trail, at the plateau that overlooks the ocean. I'll be waiting there. No more tricks, I promise. _

Less mushy than the rest of them; it surprised me. This time, Aoi didn't react when I gently folded the note up and stuck it in my pocket. I looked at her seriously, and for the first time today, I asked, "Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Positive."

"Are you okay?" I asked like I didn't know why I was asking. Maybe I didn't.

"Fine," she said, her voice firm.

I nodded, looked up at the trail. "Shall we go, then?"

She smiled at me.

"Yes," she said. "We shall."

We were still holding hands.


	3. Chapter 3

Author's notes: 

Thanks to all those who reviewed! And, as always, thanks for reading!

* * *

_What was it that I was searching for? That's right, when was it? That time we met, refusing to admit our attraction, it was like a waltz, wasn't it? _

* * *

Words in the Trees, part three

Waltz

_Grass is really an amazing thing,_ I thought as Aoi and I walked up the path that would inevitably take us to the ocean. _It's everywhere. It's just a tiny little leaf that sticks out of the ground with no support, and yet it's probably the most abundant plant in the world; It's something people can barely perceive by itself, and yet there isn't a person alive who doesn't know what grass is, that couldn't draw a blade for you if you asked. And you know what? I bet they'd all draw it a little differently. _

I didn't suppose the gardening club would appreciate me campaigning for grass recognition, but then, that had never stopped me before.

"Chie?" Aoi's voice startled me a little, but I hid it well. I had almost forgotten that I had her hand clasped in mine; that she was right there, right next to me, so absorbed had I become in my own thoughts.

_About grass. _I looked up at her.

"The grass is really pretty up here," she said, her tone more serious than her words might have suggested. I hid a grin, thinking _dude! I was just thinking about grass! _a tad inappropriate as a response. After all, I hadn't even thought about something as simple and straightforward the way the grass had looked. I'd been too focused on everything else.

I shook my head and looked away from her, a pang of _something _hitting me in my chest. A thread of hair fell out from behind my ears, into my face, and I brushed it back absently. As I did, the grin that I'd been trying to avoid played onto my lips just a little. "Yeah," I said, taking in the forest past the path, past that little slice of land that we as people felt comfortable on within the confines of this huge, living entity around us.

It was like my single word was a cue for some great omnipotent being. As soon as the word passed my lips, it was like the forest came to life, suddenly possessed of a brilliant orange haze.

_It's like the forest came to life. Just for us. _

_ Just for her. _

Aoi gasped, and I turned around to face her, suddenly ready to do…something. I didn't know what, but something. Something important. I felt in that instant that if Aoi would just look at me, only for a second…that something would happen. Something.

But she didn't. Her eyes and face had lit up, brighter than what she was gazing at by far; it was like she had entered her own personal nirvana, and for just a second, I felt something remarkably close to bitterness filter through me. I shook it off and squeezed her hand. "We should keep moving," I said. "Before it gets too dark to find a suitable place to stash the corpse."

It was strange. I said this easily, but right up until the words formed in my mouth, I had forgotten that we were there to turn some guy down. I had just been…content. Enthralled with what I was seeing. Enthralled with what I was…

Her hand tightened on mine, and I looked straight at her without even thinking about it. I met her gaze, and for a second, neither of us moved. Maybe we couldn't, or maybe we just didn't want to. I never really thought about it.

Something started pounding in my chest, and I wasn't sure if it was my heart or not. Aoi looked as though she wanted to say it; I chanced a glance down at her lips, which were, indeed, moving, mouthing soundless words at me. I couldn't read them, and it took me a moment to notice

_She's closer than she was a second ago _

_ What is she doing? _

that she was moving. She almost looked like she was swaying in the wind, what little there was. Her hair gently pushed out from her, onto my face, tickling my cheeks, but I couldn't move away.

_Am I afraid? _

_ Afraid of what? _

_ Afraid of_ that?

I was struck with the realization that I had no idea what "that" was, and that made me feel like a second grader. This feeling gave me some clue as to what "that" was, but something else in me refused to acknowledge it.

_What is she doing? _I thought again as she got even closer. _What is this girl; this student of mine doing? She is my student, isn't she? _

_ This isn't… _

"We should keep moving," I said abruptly, and everything started moving around me again, cueing me into that it had frozen in the first place. "Like I said, it'll be tough enough to hide a corpse in the daylight." I tried to start walking again, but Aoi caught me, refusing to move.

"Why are you so angry at him?" she asked. "You've been propositioned before; you never got angry then."

"It's nothing," I said quickly, and tried to move again. No luck.

"No," she said, her voice a little throatier this time; a little more serious. "It's not nothing."

She was right. She was always right about me. But that didn't mean that I could explain to her why I was angry. That I could explain to her how the way her face had dropped—as though it was _her _I was turning down—had been enough to send me on a pseudo-murderous rampage.

I never did pay close attention to the things that were closest to me.

Never.

"Why are you turning down a boy you've never met without meeting him? Is it because you don't want a boyfriend?" she said. "Or do you have somebody…" a pause, as though steeling herself, and then: "somebody you like already?"

It occurred to me that I didn't. Not really; I had never been a person to dream about boys _or _girls in my spare time.

Even the people I had dated, what few of them there were; they had all stopped calling when it came down to the inevitable question: _I was thinking about you; were you thinking about me? _And I would have to answer _no, no I wasn't, _and I could never explain to them that it wasn't that I didn't like them, I did; just that I could never…never really_ dream _like they could. And then they would hang up the phone, and I would never see them again.

Just like that.

"I don't," I said quietly. "And I'm not seeing anyone, either."

"Then why?"

_I can't tell her._

"Why, Chie?"

_I can't tell her. _

I looked away. Looked at the grass, the grass aflame with orange from the sunset. Suddenly it didn't look inviting anymore; it looked harsh.

"Chie?" it was almost a plea this time. _Don't look at the grass, Chie. Look at… _

I looked at her. She looked happier immediately, but still troubled.

_If you're going to hurt her because you don't want to hurt her, aren't you just being redundant _and _stupid? _

I was, and I knew it. And two things I was not were redundant and stupid. I hoped. "I was angry because of the way you looked."

She looked a little startled, but I pressed onward anyway.

"I was angry because you looked heartbroken when you saw the card." _Not when she saw the card. When you looked at the card like that. Like it was something dirty. _

That couldn't have been true. Where did I get that from? I was looking at the card, not her. Stupid. _Stupid. _"I was angry because I didn't want anybody to hurt you."

She took a moment to digest this, maybe, and then relaxed and smiled a little. A sad smile, perhaps, but a smile. She looked a little like she was composing herself. Maybe she was. When she had, she said, "Okay. We can go now."

I smiled as best as I could at her; she still looked depressed, and that depressed me. We started walking again, my hand still grasping hers, almost as tightly as hers grasped mine. It was probably going to leave a bruise, but I let it pass. After a second, I started rubbing the back of her hand with my thumb; whether this was to comfort her or me, I'll probably never know.

It never really mattered, anyway.

* * *

The path got steeper the closer we got to the plateau that overlooked the ocean, and the forest got even more breathtaking. The bark of the trees became a full orange rather than a mix of yellow and brown from the sun, the further the sun set, and the grass, which didn't look nearly so harsh as it had before, looked almost fluid as the wind played over it like an instrument, enticing it gently, making it seem almost musical.

A couple of times, I asked Aoi if she was okay with the hill. She had pushed herself pretty hard today, running that mile. She looked a little breathless, and I could feel her sweating into my palm—_blasted lesbians and their sweat glands_, I thought with a grin—but she always smiled as best she could and shrugged it off. Shrugged _me _off. She was in her own world as much as I had been in mine earlier. Was I really allowed to be bothered by that?

I was anyway. I wanted her to tell me what the matter was; I was worried about her, and I couldn't shake this feeling I had in the pit of my stomach any more than I could place it. Maybe people are never really capable of understanding their own feelings and reactions. Maybe the only real judge they have to determine their feelings with is their actions; a person can sit around and declare that he will take a bullet for his love. Maybe he'll honestly believe it, too; but when the time comes for him to make good on his promise, he might still run the other way, leaving only a thin stream of piss as a memorial to the feeling he really thought he had.

Maybe that was why I hated just sitting around and thinking. Maybe that was why I was unhappy; because, after replacing "sitting" with "trudging up a hill," that was exactly what I was doing.

But that was the thing about trudging up a hill and thinking. You couldn't stop.

_What is she thinking? _I would wonder. _What is she feeling? Why does she have that look on her face? Like she wants to cry, but refuses to admit it? _

_ I don't want you to cry, Aoi. Not ever. _

_ That's why I have to reject this boy. And the boy after. And the boy after. Until… _

_ But why should that matter? _

Maybe there was something to be said for trudging up a hill and thinking.

_Until what? _

We stopped. Or rather, she stopped, and I nearly pulled her to the ground, so lost was I in my own world, again. I really _wasn't _allowed to be bothered by hers, I guess. "We're almost there," Aoi said.

The world came flooding back to me, all at once: I was standing at the very peak of the hill, not a hundred meters, down a curved path that I couldn't see the end of, from the plateau. If you looked out and through the trees, you could see the ocean, sparkling through the woods like stars through a cloudy sky. There was a bench and a sign: _overlook plateau, 100m _and an arrow helpfully indicating that people should continue following the same path they had just killed themselves on.

The grass was crunchier here; more easily breakable. Aoi looked at me intently, and I said, "Are you sure you want to go through with this? I can go by myself, you know. If you really want."

She more or less ignored me. She spoke quickly, as though she wanted to get everything she had to say out at once, as though it was potentially the last moment she had to say it in. "Chie," she said. "If the person over there really is…really is someone you love, I don't want you to turn them down just because of me."

"There isn't any—" I started to say. It sounded pointless all of a sudden.

"Please," she whispered. "If you love somebody, you shouldn't let anything stop you. They're submitting themselves for your judgment. Promise me you won't hurt them _and _yourself, if that is really what it is."

Her eyes were sparkling with tears. I couldn't hurt her like this, now. _Even if it means hurting her later_.

It was funny. Even with that train of thought so constant, I never figured it out, right till the end. "I promise."

She smiled, and let go of my hand; the emptiness on my palm seemed to spread through my entire body, and I smiled at her as best I could through an enormous gulp. My throat didn't seem to want to work properly. "Well then. Shall we?"

She nodded, and we started walking. I couldn't stop glancing over at her, but she looked calmer now; more detached, maybe. Or maybe more focused. It was tough to tell with her sometimes; she was serious, but she was carefree, too. She was just about everything, all at once. I was so intent that I actually tripped over a protruding root on the path, and only her sudden hand on my shoulder saved me from arriving at what was either going to be my first date or my first murder with bloody, scratched-up hands.

Then, suddenly, the plateau opened up in front of my eyes. All at once, it was just _there_: A huge, circular section of dirt and fallen leaves in the middle of the trees; just like the path but for one major difference: There were no trees between us and the ocean anymore, and for just a moment, the sun—now a burning red on the horizon—transfixed me utterly.

There was nobody there.

I wanted to curse. I actually dropped to a squat, because I didn't feel like my legs could hold the bulk of the rage that was rapidly building up inside of me. I wanted to scream and curse and rave and tear down a fucking tree with my bare fucking hands and ram it down the fucker's gullet and

"He's not here. The little-…he's not here," I said. "We were looking for him _all this time _and he—"

"There's a reason he's not here," Aoi said throatily.

I looked up at her, and she walked out into the middle of the plateau, tears brimming in her eyes. And then, all at once, it made sense to me. Not just the letters and the looks from today, but every single look she'd given me for the past three years. Every inadvertent touch. Everything.

It had all been right in front of my face, just like the grass. And still, I had looked right past it. And that was the last thing, I realized, that I wanted to do.

But still, I had to hear it from her. I straightened up and looked her straight in the eye. "Tell me."

She smiled a little, and the tears that had been welling up started to trace little wet lines down the smooth skin of her cheeks.

"I wrote the letters." She _ran ahead and planted the third letter when I was talking with Mai. She probably had Mai plant the second letter. _

I started walking towards her, my legs carrying me as though it were the most important thing in the world all of a sudden. I think it was. I think they wouldn't have stopped even if you had severed them from my torso entirely.

"I wrote them because it was the only way I could think of doing…doing this."

I was halfway to her. I couldn't let her do what she was about to do. She was about to break down, and then she'd never be able to

_ say it. _

"Chie…because I really…"

I was there, and I threw myself into her arms with as much might as I could muster.

She stopped speaking for a moment, and I knew it was because she couldn't as hot tears started to soak into my shirt. I hugged her tight, using one hand to press her head into me, using the other to rub her back.

After a second, I relaxed my arms, and she pulled back. She had the same look that she'd had before, as we stared at each other in silence, as her lips had tried and failed, I think, to say it.

So she said it now.

"I love you."

I smiled, and I think it was the most honest smile I had ever shown in my life. "I love you," I echoed, and then I glanced at her lips. They were doing something again, but it wasn't mouthing words. And she was getting closer again.

_Boys never go more than ninety percent when they want to kiss a girl. Girls should be allowed the final ten, so as to avoid bruised cheekbones. _Somebody I had gone on a date with once had told me that, as a joke; but I think he was being honest, too.

But I wasn't ten percent of anything. So I kissed her. I kissed her deeply, finding her lips small but warm, pressing into mine with the same urgency I had heard in her voice just a few minutes before. Like this could be the last moment of her life, and so she had to live it as much as possible.

It wasn't the last moment, though.

It wasn't the last kiss, either. There were many, many more after that.

It was dark by the time we finally made it to the base of the mountain. I think that alone is proof enough.

I think we found what we were looking for. Maybe we never even knew what that was, but I think we found it. Both of us, at once. And that, I think, is the most anybody can ever say.

* * *

I see everything that goes on at this school. But I don't see a lot of things, too. It's impossible to see everything. I'm not just the Reliable Source. I never was. I was a loyal, caring friend. Now I'm also a loyal, caring lover. I've requested and been granted permission to have Aoi move in with me after the summer recess ends. The administration was more than happy to comply.

I still visit that mountain, even now, when I have no reason to be anywhere near Fuuka academy. Sometimes Aoi comes with me, sometimes she doesn't. I've marked off the tree she put the letter on, and I visit it every time, and I carve some new words into it with a little hammer and nail. I think people read it, but I'm not sure. I hope so.

Because there are some words that have more influence than others; words that come in unexpected places can impact our lives more than words we see every day.

Maybe that's why I still write there. Maybe that's why I still compose words onto those trees.

Maybe.

_Nee, nandakke sagashiteita mono / are wa, sou ne itsudakke / bokura ga inryoku ni sakarai nagara deatta koro_

Sore wa WARUTSU no you da ne fushigi sa 

The end.

* * *

Thank you all for reading!


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